Education volunteer Robert McMann teaches in Guyana. Photo courtesy the Peace Corps

When Bob Graham, 65, from Atlanta, lost his job as a sales manager in the tire industry last summer, he first tried to find a new job. Finding himself stymied, he returned to a path he had briefly considered 45 years earlier.

“I heard the Peace Corps was interested in bringing in people over the age of 50,” Graham said, “so I figured maybe I’ll go do what I wanted to do way back in 1964.”

Now, Graham is tying up loose ends and saying goodbye to friends and family. This month, he’s scheduled to leave for 27 months on the Pacific archipelago of Vanuatu as a Peace Corps volunteer, where he’ll try to help a community develop its economic opportunities.

“I’m pinching myself,” Graham said. “At 65, you know, you’re walking on a tightrope. Now I’m going someplace that’s very friendly and yet very challenging. I know it’s a place that moves at a different pace, where the culture and customs are different, but I’m up to that challenge. I’m psyched.”

A surge in boomer applications

Credit the economic downturn, President Obama’s renewed call for national service or a demographic bulge of retiring boomers who fondly recall the spirit of President John F. Kennedy’s “ask not” call for Americans to serve their nation, not the other way around.

A big draw is the Peace Corps, which celebrates its 50th anniversary in March 2011. In 2008, applications from candidates 50-plus were are up by 44 percent over the previous year, officials say.

“We have an aging population in the U.S., and many people are looking for meaningful ways to give back,” said spokeswoman Laura Lartigue. In recent years, the Peace Corps has made greater efforts to recruit older Americans who can share their experiences with people in the developing world.

“We represent the diversity of Americans overseas,” Rosie Mauk, the Peace Corps’ associate director of volunteer recruitment and selection, said in an interview. “If 95 percent of our volunteers are all young and right out of college, they don’t really represent the diversity of Americans.” In addition, Mauk noted, many host nations are now specifically requesting Peace Corps volunteers who can offer real-world experience in technical fields, business development, agribusiness or teaching, rather than young adults freshly minted from college.

A targeted effort to entice older Americans to volunteer for Peace Corps duty actually started in mid-2007, Mauk says, but the real results of the outreach program have become dramatically obvious in the past year, as recruiters become more accustomed to working with older applicants.

“We’re looking for the life experiences these volunteers bring with them,” Mauk said, noting that in many foreign communities age induces a sort of respect that a young college graduate would not receive. Applications briefly surged by an estimated 175 percent after Obama’s inauguration and his renewal of the call for national service, she noted.

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